


Almost Alive

by smalldisasters



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh!, Yu-Gi-Oh! Series
Genre: M/M, Thiefshipping
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-05
Updated: 2016-05-05
Packaged: 2018-06-06 13:11:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 859
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6755455
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/smalldisasters/pseuds/smalldisasters
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bakura reflects on living, and being with the living.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Almost Alive

**Author's Note:**

> Very short purple flowery bit of prose to get the account active. This is the first writing I've shared in ten years. I'm nervous.

Bakura lay on his side looking at Marik. The freezing rain ran down the window panes and thunder rolled in the distance. The sheets fell over their hips, and Marik’s skin was prickled with chill. The room wasn’t cold, not to Bakura. He never felt the cold against his icy skin. The too-skinny body he haunted didn’t hold the heat in, but bones and ghosts don’t care. The boy in the bed cared – his glowing skin was darkened by sunlight and warmth, and his hands burned against Bakura’s chest. He was the colour of the desert dust and Bakura was mesmerized by the shades and shapes of life and strength when the strong limbs lay around his own pale frame. Sometimes he studied the mirror, watching the face he lay behind, looking for humanity there, trying to find the same light that shone from behind Marik’s eyes, but between his own empty self and the lonely vessel he lived inside, he was almost afraid he was disappearing from the world. It had been so long since he’d been in the world of the living that it was foreign and did not belong to him any longer. It had changed and grown and he was an anachronism.

However, he was adaptable too. He was a thief - he prided himself on being the best – but he couldn’t steal all that time back. Instead, he stole treasure and gold, but that was simple. He stole words and thoughts, but anyone with quick wit could do that. He stole souls and minds, but that was a spirit trick. He stole a body and a life, like the ghost he was. He also stole a heart and its affections, and looking at the creature beside him, he wasn’t sure how he’d done it. He stole someone from the life he might have lived, and stole into his bed and into his plans, woven himself into his future, tried to lace his presence into his thoughts so he couldn’t disappear. 

And now, beneath lavender and violet sheets that contrasted against the body on the bed, Bakura lay on his side looking at Marik. He slowly, cautiously reached out and placed his white hand on the muscular chest, cool as silk, but Bakura could feel his warm heart beating inside him. He pressed the other hand against his own heart, the heart so fragile and nervous like a white rabbit inside his ribcage. Sometimes he wanted to push his fingers right between the ladders of bones and find out if his heart was warm inside too. Sometimes he wanted to open the streams under his skin and see the blood running, like proof he inhabited something living, and that it was almost the same as being alive. His flesh itched and burned with it sometimes, but Marik had been angry and upset last time he’d opened a long red tear in his arm, sitting on the bathroom floor, watching curiously as the blood welled up, running fast. It had sealed itself up, turned rough and tight then soft and puckered and sometimes when the lights were low Marik ran his thumb across the pink ridge in his skin. Though Bakura still ached to see inside himself, he knew it hurt Marik’s human heart, resilient though it was. He had to look after that heart, so he left his skin closed. 

He was so lost in his thoughts of the humanity inside the sun-kissed chest beneath his hand, that he didn’t notice the slim fingers creeping towards his until they touched. Bakura looked up to bright, light eyes, half open in the darkness. He studied the face as he drew closer, pulled in by a strong hand. They kissed silently, even as Marik moved Bakura’s body over his own, reaching up to lace his fingers in the cobwebs of Bakura’s hair. But when teeth and tongue found the curves of his jaw and throat, he couldn’t be silent any longer. Breathless sounds fell from him as the cold, pale figure became heated around him, stealing his heat – for Bakura was always a thief first – and reflecting it back, burning him up under passionate hands and complete worship across his whole body. There was a pause, and a chill, and then the heat was wrapped all around him, even more overwhelming in friction and muscle tension. 

Bakura was not silent either, the words _love, gods,_ and _Marik_ were synonymous on his gasping lips as bones jarred against each other and skin slid together. They moved as one, hands clinging desperately against slicked spines and ribs and arms and legs and whatever else scrabbling fingers could gain purchase on. 

They tensed together, slowed together, breathed together, hard, shallow, and rested together. Their foreheads touching, lips brushing, hands cautiously releasing their hold, as they relearned to trust the space between them again. They lay side by side, heads tilted towards each other. Marik’s glowing eyes slowly fell closed, and Bakura lay on his side, looking at him. He was dazed, thoughts scattered, but all came back to the same thought of thanking the gods that Marik had found him alive.


End file.
